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A pinwheel calculator is a class of mechanical calculator described as early as 1685, and popular in the 19th and 20th century, calculating via wheels whose number of teeth were adjustable. These wheels, also called pinwheels, could be set by using a side lever which could expose anywhere from 0 to 9 teeth, and therefore when coupled to a ...
Odhner thought of his machine in 1871 while repairing a Thomas' Arithmometer (which was the only mechanical calculator in production at the time) and decided to replace its heavy, bulky Leibniz cylinder by a lighter, smaller pinwheel disk. This is why the two machines share the same name but look completely different.
The Leibniz wheel was used in many calculating machines for 200 years, and into the 1970s with the Curta hand calculator, until the advent of the electronic calculator in the mid-1970s. Leibniz was also the first to promote the idea of an Pinwheel calculator. [7]
Was the first scientific calculator to fly in space in 1973. [5] HP-35 calculators were carried on the Skylab 3 and Skylab 4 flights, between July 1973 and February 1974. [6] Is the first pocket calculator with a numeric range that covered 200 decades (more precise 199, ±10 ±99). [5]
The gift of a Texas Instruments calculator opened a new world of math problems and secret codes in the years ... Calculator added up to fun for a math phobic kid in the 1970s | Mark J. Price.
A Leibniz wheel or stepped drum is a cylinder with a set of teeth of incremental lengths which, when coupled to a counting wheel, can be used in the calculating engine of a class of mechanical calculators. Invented by Leibniz in 1673, it was used for three centuries until the advent of the electronic calculator in the mid-1970s.
A partially disassembled Curta calculator, showing the digit slides and the stepped drum behind them Curta Type I calculator, top view Curta Type I calculator, bottom view. The Curta is a hand-held mechanical calculator designed by Curt Herzstark. [1] It is known for its extremely compact design: a small cylinder that fits in the palm of the hand.
The HP-65 was one of the first calculators to include a base conversion function, although it only supported octal (base 8) conversion. It could also perform conversions between degrees/minutes/seconds ( sexagesimal ) and decimal degree ( sexadecimal ) values, as well as polar/cartesian coordinate conversion.